perchance to dream
by Waterfowl
Summary: Lee Adama's spiritual journey may take a turn, as he is faced with forensic evidence of 'the other side', while struggling through the aftermath of recent loss. Set through 'A Disquiet Follows My Soul' and 'Blood on the Sacales' season 4 .


**A/N: ****The BSG 'verse dimensions have clearly been augmented by the ones, extending the conventional 3D of 'this side'. Avatars, otherworldly visions/apparitions, 'angels', 'head people' and 'messengers', open to ambiguous interpretation, are no strangers to the world of BSG. Yet, not all the characters were originally predisposed to eagerly embrace the irrational powers at work in the universe. Lee Adama, for once. **

**This drabble is intended to hypothesize, what if Starbuck (and her Viper) w****ere not the only 'tangible' returnees from 'the other side'. Upon the tragedy of Earth and Dee, Lee Adama might have been subjected to a more intricate spiritual journey, involving excruciating experiences, that could eventually bring him to an equilibrium point of acceptance, demonstrated in the show finale.**

**Set through the beginning of 'A Disquiet Follows My Soul' and the closure of 'Blood on the Scales' (season 4).**

**Disclaimer1: None of the characters, plot-points, inherent to the show, belong to me.**

**Disclaimer2: The inspiration for the title belongs to William Shakespeare. **

… **perchance to dream***

He trod on it. The earring. Getting off the couch that passed for his bunk, lately. Working himself to a troubled, restless slumber over piles of paperwork, sprawled on the low table nearby, had become a nightly routine, ever since Earth, or what used to be their prophesized Elysium, anyway. Ever since Dee… That was a trick to fool himself into avoiding dreams. It failed to work nine and a half times out of ten, but at the very least, that way he had the paperwork handy to distract himself right away from torturous reality, dreams evoked. It worked so far to keep him sane.

That morning was different. He woke up to the sensation of tingling fulfillment, his body had ached for from as far as the premises of Baltar's trial. He'd missed her for a lot longer, than he'd lost her beyond any hope to reclaim. He was quite aware that was to be expected. His subconsciousness would keep conjuring the scent, and taste, and feel of her for an excruciating lifetime to come, in order to soothe the turmoil somewhat, his mind and soul were condemned to endure for equally as long. He woke up to the memory of her timid apologetic smile and the salt of her tears, spilled in poignant delight, over his mouth. Or could those be his own, shed unbeknownst, while asleep, through the heartrending awe of the joy, deemed abandoned for good?

It didn't strike him as odd not to remember her say anything; her silences always had a way of speaking volumes right to the very core of his heart. What he could remember was spelling, with urgent intensity, what he failed to summon the courage alongside the words to persuade her in that frightful night. The lustrous memory of her eyes gleaming in shady dimness of his office, her hands and lips, seeking his proximity, suggested eloquently she believed.

His gaze trailed fondly to the image of her, regarding his every move with benevolent, sad affection from the framed caption on his desk. For the first time in days pushing on eternity was he able to meet her eyes without the dizzying upsurge of nauseous devastation, he'd grown accustomed to. He walked off the couch, the overbearing inkling to trace her face and conjure the feel of her skin under his fingertips, still tickling vividly after the night, pressing him to reach for the picture.

And that was when he stepped on it. Sharp prickling pain virtually made him jump. He bent down to pick up the offending object only to all but drop it back, in superstitious horror. Glittering on his palm was a silver earring. He would have recognized it among a thousand. Paired up with a matching one, it comprised the set he gave her for their first anniversary, back over New Caprica. Jewelry neither a commodity, nor a currency in demand in the austere new world their people were up to taming then, some strings had to be pulled to get hold of the obsolete excuse of luxury. He would never forget the Saggitaron girl in her, amazed and moved to tears by the modest token. He could remember shamed regret, _that_ was not the world he was eager to endow her with, stir up through his apathy. Little could he anticipate back then. The ultimate world he was able to give her, visited demise upon her vibrancy and his hope. He was certain she had those earrings on the night he walked Dee to her death in the Gods tenfold cursed officers' quarters.

He pursed the eyes shut violently, till they ached, willing the offending apparition to vanish together with the searing memory of her skin, smooth and sensitive under his touch, as he nuzzled her earlobe when they danced, _that _day, and tonight, within hazed fabric of his dream. He did remember drifting to sleep, hands full of her, spent and serene with generous contentment the illusion granted his, otherwise, plagued mind. What he was now clasping in his hand was not a figment of imagination, abused by pain and despair, or not.

Ever alert reason drove his mind into gear, opting to stride to the locker, where the box of her personal effects was stashed, as opposed to crash back on the couch, bury his face in the hands and let long pending weeping take over. He could always resume that promptly enough, he reckoned. He knew the contents of the container by heart and shape, already. Had been in the recent habit of pulling one or two items out every so often, to invoke the puzzle of Anastasia in scrambled alignment.

Apart from her dog-tags and wedding band, stringed on the same chain, that were his personal mill-stone to weight on the neck then on, the rest of her things were locked securely in, most of the time. His father borrowed their nuptial photo for his extended collection of family mementoes. He himself was not ready to release the rest of the snapshots into the scarcely adorned habitat he now called home. Was not ready to label easy, encompassing bliss, they manifested, as memory. Was not ready to embrace that memory as anything else, but an accusation. Maybe later, but not just yet.

Sure enough, filed meticulously in a minute plastic bag by one of Cottle's assistants, or could be, by Doc's own self, they were. Two exquisite earrings, dimmed with time and underuse, one tarnished pronouncedly by the now rusty coat of her blood. The one he spotted by the couch minutes earlier, though identical to the rest, made an odd out. He scaled the small ornaments in his palms for a long while, questioning their reality.

His temples commenced pounding, a dull nagging throb, all too successful in exhausting the remnants of his pragmatism and composure lately. They had all been through Hades, were wandering its bleak hallways for years, subjected to experiences to be inevitably deemed insane, had the worlds' end not scored any incarnation of madness hundreds of points in advance. Kara's return from the dead, her Viper transmitting the way to Earth to the mystical Final Five, of all people and Cylon, ought to have, presumably, prepared him for the idea of some irrational powers at work in their woeful universe. But that was Kara, after all. He would know for sure something was horribly off, if anything ever added up logically about her.

Dee was different. Dee was sensible and practical, and comprehensible, and gone… She arranged her departure without a bang for a decoy, leaving him no window of hope to ever rationalize a miracle. That he knew deep down he had, apparently, run out of miracles as far as getting her back was concerned, whirled and twisted his current confusion into a simmering well of hurt.

There could still be the simplest of mundane explanations for the piece of jewelry to have found its way under his foot, there on Colonial One, he tried to remind himself. The otherworldly sorrow firmly shrouding his existence lately, brought him to grasp the inexplicable, shoving the item into his pocket for further reference. He had other matters demanding his immediate attention even that early in the morning, a very real press conference, scheduled with Zarek and Admiral Adama, for one.

* * *

Brisk patter of tiny feet approached as he was making his way to the Admiral's quarters. His father summoned an 'inner circle' meeting over the proposition their new Cylon allies issued. A small body burrowed into his knees with a cheerful squeak. Hera had outraced whatever parent was shepherding her to daycare, as usual. He bent down to meet the sweet, beaming face and picked the girl up, on instinct.

He was still far from certain what to make of this impossible creation of the two races now baptized by equally distributed desperation, but the child felt warm, vulnerable and amazingly right in his arms. A distant longing stirred in the securely quarantined area of his heart, still harboring the memory his kid could have been only a bit older than Hera, if luck had spared his (or her) father a fit of disgraceful panic and his (or her) mother the nuclear demolition.

Transcending that, however, was the memory of Helo's tearful account of Dee having volunteered to babysit the Agathons' daughter right after they came back from the Gods damned wasteland, of Dee appearing exuberant and lively then. He was instantly painfully aware that, himself excluding, Hera was, by far, the last person to have heard her laugh.

The little girl bounced and twirled in his grip, distracted by something over his shoulder. The response to his inquisitive gaze was an impish smile and a small finger, pointing behind him – '_Auntie Ana…_' He nearly toppled, swirling around to catch glimpse of her reference. The hallway was empty, yet he could sense an unmistakable presence, enhancing the muted artificial light with a peculiar luminous warmth, the like of which he could recall from the night before.

It didn't particularly scare him that he was finally loosing it, rather, he was surprised it should have taken that long. Hera was a different matter, however. He'd heard fractured snippets about Cylon projection of course, from the one Cylon they chose to call their own, mainly. Never spared the matter much thought, having many a thing on his plate to fret over, other than an ability of intelligent machines to create authentic reality by power of imagination only. He could picture quite vividly himself and Zak, huddled behind chairs, making believe with amazing efficiency they were manning Viper controls. Didn't make him and his brother Cylons, did it? If anything, Tigh's resurfaced memory firmly eliminated that from the realm of plausibility. The child he was holding, though, was indeed half-Cylon, which could explain why Hera would conjure up the image of a woman, she didn't even necessarily know was deceased, at will. What it was unable to explain, was the minute silver piece, stashed in the pocket of his dress pants, nor the gnawing longing, he shooed away persistently with all his pragmatism was worth.

He was still staring, transfixed, at the shyly grinning kid, when Helo hastened up, turning the corner. The girl squealed an exuberant greeting and instantly traded hands, clinging to her daddy eagerly. Sincere concern and heartfelt compassion was clearly readable in Helo's mandatory inquiry as to how he was faring, as well as in the recurrently issued invitation to come over or ask for any help, whenever he would be so inclined. So much so, that he almost had to feel sorry for the guy. It would seem at times Helo deemed it his personal charge to make sure everything was alright. That a simple act of friendship didn't fit Dee back into the pattern of optimism was, probably, eating fiercely at the good Karl Agathon. He couldn't help smiling ruefully, silently welcoming Helo to the club, and thanked the Captain, meaning it. For not hesitating to at least make an effort to save her. Going on forever bereaved by the failure was to be his penance, though, not Helo's.

The Agathons had long since left in the general direction of daycare, while he kept contemplating the blank space of the hallway, tracing her missing silhouette through the gossamer texture of wishful thinking, discarded forcefully, before setting back on course to his father's quarters.

* * *

The space within the airlock seemed frozen in the eerie glow the lights cast over the faces of the executed, still he could feel it behind his back. The familiar enclosing warmth, her proximity infallibly emitted. He couldn't dare turn back with his father, Tigh and Baltar, and a Gods damned fire squad aligned right beside him, but, foremost, for the fear of catching glimpse of nothing more but thin air, yet again. Astonished horror, transcribed in Gaeta's eyes for a moment, though, confirmed what he'd deduced intuitively – she was there, watching, petrified, from a shady nook, the ultimate nightmare, she endeavored to escape by choosing to take her own life before it ever happened, wind up to a closing, irrevocably tragic act. He could feel his jaw clench reflexively, a renovated surge of fury, at the mutineers and at himself alike, escalating with a vengeance. That was the one scene he'd rather she never learned about. The retrospective doubts he might have prevented all this by simply blasting Zarek's brain out years ago on Astral Queen, instead of plunging into a rendered ridiculous game of upholding vestiges of democracy, made him feel uneasily complicit in her posthumous torment.

Veiled by dread in Gaeta's gaze was a silent plea, the last wish he was all the more eager to carry out since it matched his own. Thus, he shifted ever so slightly to the side, effectively obscuring the view of the fire range from where he could sense she might be looking, shielding her from the anguish of this one atrocity as best he could. Dry rustle of rifle fire rang a hollow echo in the chilly stillness, as he closed his palm around the tiny silver item, hailing the prickly awareness his miniature forensic treasure developed a consecutive way of inducing.

* * *

*****To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!

The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remember'd.

**(Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1)**


End file.
